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Thursday, 9 January 2014

When the burly Microsoft went surly.

So here's an article I wrote for an online competition organized by an online article portal. I will not divulge their name to prevent them from being subjected to public ignominy by my fans for not selecting my article amongst the ones to be eventually published. I don't want to extirpate anyone, you know. Fortunately, we have our own platform to express ourselves. So, here it goes.

Microsoft Corporation, the
Redmond Giant, has been a harbinger of viable PC operating system solutions and
has taken the fore in office suite applications and various other kinds of
software solutions. It has undoubtedly become inimitable in terms of the market
share it holds in the PC operating system markets and continues to maintain its
stronghold despite ferocious attempts by Mac and open source fraternity to tip
it off. Despite all this gargantuan success, Microsoft too had its share of
failures. At times it couldn’t conjure the various possibilities and at others,
it simply tried to either imitate the competition or tried to do a little too
much. Here’s a list of 5 mistakes Microsoft would always shy away from.

BOB – 1995

The home screen of BOB

Microsoft launched BOB with a lot of fanfare and anticipation
in 1995, hoping that it will soon become a buzzword and a ubiquitous piece of
code running on all those 8 MB SDRAM systems. BOB was a Graphical User
Interface(GUI) ancillary solution for Windows 3.x and Windows 95 operating
systems. It was a kind of a graphical assistant running over your operating
system, claiming to provide you with a better and more assistive operating
environment. It had a virtualization of a home with various rooms and kitchen etc,
just like a real house and a virtual dog helped you roam around in the house.
One room, say had a desk and papers on it and if you had clicked on it, BOB
would open the Word software for you to compose your documents. For users will
versed with how to click on the Word logo on the desktop to open it, this
additional effort was nothing less than futile. BOB was later on made available
for even the upcoming operating systems including Windows NT 4.1 launched in
1997 and Windows 98. BOB met with heavy criticism because it occupied a huge
chink of memory that was already in paucity and often made the system to hang.
Moreover, it simply extended the task of opening an application by making you
hover on the various items placed in the house to get to your application. BOB
was a woeful fracas because it tried to assist you for something that you
simply did not need. It in fact made your task more difficult. Microsoft big
shots believed that BOB failed because it was way ahead of its time. Whatever
it was, BOB features in millennium lists of worst tech products.

Microsoft XP Tablet PC Edition – 2002

Bill Gates unveiling the first XP Tablet in 2002

In what was another attempt of transcending the bounds of
time, Microsoft became a little too overambitious about the prospects of tablet
PCS a little too early. With the advent of palmtops being launched in the fall
of 2000, Microsoft thought about adapting their next OS for the tablet PC
environment and came up with a somewhat downscaled version of their XP
operating system in 2002. This was followed by a furore with a lot of PC and
laptop manufacturers coming up with quick models capable of running the new OS.
Consequently, a lot of devices were sold with the new hardware coupled with the
new OS and everybody began to believe that the tablet PC era is here. But soon
enough, the ramifications of downscaling an OS became evident. Continuous page
faults, invalid memory swaps, slow performance, and the frustration that piled
up because of downscaled features not working properly on a not so powerful
machine eventually kicked out the devices off the market. Once again, Microsoft
tried to create a niche only when the iPad was introduced by Steve Jobs of
Apple in 2010.

Windows Millennium(ME) – 2000

In 2000, Microsoft was brimming with confidence after the
success that they had with the Windows 98 Second Edition SE). But now, with the
advent of the new decade, century as well as millennium, the Windows 9.X series
was to become a bygone. Hence, Microsoft came up with 2 new operating systems,
one after the another. One was Windows 2000 and other was Windows Millennium or
ME which was promoted as Me to turn it into a cult. Whereas Windows 2000, which
comprised of 3 server editions and a single personal user edition, was largely
targeted towards users of Windows Server environment, Windows Me was positioned
as a replacement for Windows 98SE. However, the replacement turned out to be
worse than the ancestor. Extremely slow performance, illimitable number of
bugs, random errors related to DLLs and file system and the celebrated blue
screen of death made it a source of animosity towards Microsoft for its users.
The professional edition of Windows 2000 and the entire gamut of Windows Me
were later replaced by perhaps the most successful Pc operating system till
date – Windows XP.

Internet Explorer 7 and onwards

The Internet Explorer(IE) was once the pride of Microsoft and
the users. It was considered to be the most streamlined browser with the best
possible security and customization. However, complacence often gets the worst
of you. In 1994-95 when Netscape Navigator was harrowing across the Internet
Browser market with unique features and design, Microsoft started working
heavily and burned the midnight oil to eventually come up with IE 4.X and IE
5.X versions of Internet Explorer that eventually eliminated Navigator by 1999.
Later on, Microsoft played the masterstroke with IE 6 in 2001. IE 6 was the
default browser of Windows XP and they together made the most successful
combination of OS and web browser, providing users with unhindered experience.
But then, Microsoft thought that’s it. No more need to work on a web browser
now. And the next update to IE came as late as 2006, 5 years after the release
of IE 6. In the meanwhile, ingenious browsers like Opera, Firefox and Safari
came up with features like tabbed browsing, secure browsing and what not. And
soon, an obsolete IE was eclipsed. IE 7 was haphazardly developed with
inclusion of aforementioned features but it had already lost the buck. And with
the introduction of Google Chrome, they had now another fierce competitor.
Finally, the fracas in from of IE 8 and IE 9 simply did it for Microsoft with
all the remaining loyal customers moving towards better alternatives. The same
Microsoft which triumphed in the browser war in 1994-1999 was now swept out.
Wait, the webpage is still loading!

Vista – 2006

And how can this list be over without a mention of Vista. You
could have used it as a third degree measure to make convicts of felonies to
confess. Slowest, heaviest and the most buggiest OS of the Windows family. It
not only needed more Ram than average, even with that it often produced
difficulties in browsing and deterred the smooth operating environment provided
by its predecessor XP. It was in fact nowhere near the brilliance of XP which
could faithfully run on a single chip of 64MB Ram as well. Vista was made to
look murky and trendy for no apparent reason. The buttons were provided some
gleam and some experimentation was tried with the celebrated start menu, all of
which added to the already built up agony of the users. The new OS was outright
rejected and courtesy of some security loopholes and other lacunas, Microsoft
eventually itself urged businesses to continue business to use XP until the
next version was released. And once again, just like XP saved Microsoft from
the blunder they made in the form of Me, Windows 7 saved them from the
embarrassment caused by Vista.

The list is by no means comprehensive. Other prominent
failures include Zune, Kin and their smartwatch. Microsoft, with due respect,
still holds substantial market share in its bulwark arenas, but this list shows
how even a gigantic corporation can falter.